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Arsenic Poisoning in the Ganges Delta the Natural Contamination of Drinking Water by Arsenic Needs to Be Urgently Addressed

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Arsenic Poisoning in the Ganges Delta the Natural Contamination of Drinking Water by Arsenic Needs to Be Urgently Addressed brief communications Arsenic poisoning in the Ganges delta The natural contamination of drinking water by arsenic needs to be urgently addressed. he pollution by naturally occurring 0 arsenic of alluvial Ganges aquifers, Twhich are used for the public water supply in Bangladesh and West Bengal, has 20 been discussed by Nickson et al.1. We agree with their main conclusion that arsenic is 40 released by reductive dissolution of iron oxyhydroxides, as was proposed earlier2. Our observations indicate that arsenic- 60 rich pyrite and other arsenic minerals, Depth (m) which were proposed in previous models 80 (cited by Nickson et al.1) to give rise to arsenic pollution, are rare or even absent in 100 the sediments of the Ganges delta. We believe that arsenic is more likely to be co- precipitated with or scavenged by iron (III) 120 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 and manganese (IV) in the sedimentary Figure 1 Map showing arsenic-affected areas (shaded). Cu, cop- Total arsenic (µg per litre) environment. per belt of Bihar; S and D, Subarnarekha and Damodar river Nickson et al.1 suggested that the arsenic basins; C, coal basins; R, Rajmahal volcanics; H, Himalayas; and Figure 2 Variation of total arsenic with depth in aquifers in in these alluvial sediments is derived from SO, sulphide occurrence with arsenic in Darjeeling Himalayas. West Bengal. sulphide deposits in the Ganges basin. However, the copper belt of Bihar, which The relatively low values of dissolved iron increased the natural mobility of arsenic. contains small amounts of arsenopyrite, upstream of the Ganges delta indicate that The efficiency with which arsenic is and the coal basins of the Damodar valley, the environment may not be sufficiently removed by adsorption onto iron-coated which contain moderate concentrations of reducing to mobilize iron and arsenic. sand10 and by adsorption on and co-precip- arsenic, are drained by rivers that flow far to Nickson et al.1 reported that arsenic con- itation with ferrihydrite11 depends on both the south of the Ganges tributary system centration increases with depth in wells at the arsenic oxidation state and the ratio of (Fig. 1). We suggest that there are several Manikganj, Faridpur and Tungipara in iron to arsenic. The proposed removal of more likely sources of sedimentary arsenic, Bangladesh. However, this observation arsenic by simple aeration1 of anoxic water including the Gondwana coal seams in the appears to be site specific, as the large data- must therefore be approached with caution. Rajmahal basin, which contain up to 200 base5–7 for aquifers in West Bengal indicates S. K. Acharyya*, P. Chakraborty*, parts per million (p.p.m.) of arsenic; isolated that arsenic decreases with depth (Fig. 2). S. Lahiri*, B. C. Raymahashay†, outcrops of sulphides in the Darjeeling During the past thirty years, ground- Saumyen Guha†, Amitava Bhowmik† Himalayas, which contain up to 0.8% water has been used increasingly for irriga- *Geological Survey of India, arsenic; and other sources in the upper tion and the use of phosphate fertilizers has Calcutta 700016, India reaches of the Ganges river system. increased threefold. More than 0.5 million †Department of Civil Engineering, The Ganges alluvial tract upstream of tubewells with handpumps, 0.1 million Indian Institute of Technology, Rajmahal, in the states of Bihar and Uttar shallow tubewells, and 3,000 deep tubewells Kanpur 208016, India Pradesh, does not suffer from large-scale have been sunk at depths of 10–20 m, 1. Nickson, R. et al. Nature 395, 338 (1998). 8,9 arsenic contamination. This indicates that 30–100 m and 50–200 m, respectively . 2. Bhattacharya, P. et al. Int. J. Water Res. Dev. 13, 79–92 (1997). the Quaternary sediments around the This widespread withdrawal of ground- 3. Hiller, K. Geol. Jahrb. D 90, 3–35 (1988). Ganges delta have characteristic features water may have mobilized phosphate 4. Mukherjea, A. & Hazra, S. Ind. J. Geol. 69, 41–54 (1997). 5. Center for the Study of Man and the Environment, Calcutta that favour the initial retention and subse- derived from fertilizers and from the decay (unpublished data). quent release of arsenic. These sediments of natural organic materials in shallow 6. Central Groundwater Board, New Delhi (unpublished data). have high proportions of clay and contain aquifers. The increase in phosphate concen- 7. Geological Survey of India, Calcutta (unpublished data). relatively large amounts of organic carbon, tration could promote the growth of sedi- 8. Bagla, P. & Kaiser, J. Science 274, 174–175 (1996). 3,4 9. Mallick, S. & Rajagopal, N. R. Curr. Sci. 70, 956–958 (1996). and are thicker towards the south . The ment biota and the desorption of arsenic 10. Joshi, A. & Chaudhuri, M. J. Env. Eng. ASCE 122, 769–771 (1996). average arsenic content in cores from bore- from sediments. These combined microbio- 11.Wong, P. L. N., Huang, J. C. Y. & Cheng, T. W. J. Chin. Inst. Env. holes in West Bengal is higher in layers of logical and chemical processes might have Eng. 5, 241–251 (1995). clay (9.5–12 p.p.m.) than of sand (3.8–4.8 p.p.m.)5. Quaternary sediments in the Ganges alluvial tract in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh contain more sand and are much e have been studying the contami- Bangladesh groundwater. We disagree with narrower than sediments in the Bengal nation of groundwater by arsenic Nickson et al.’s claim that arsenic concen- basin, which may explain why they retain Wand the attend-ant human suffering trations in shallow (oxic) wells are mostly less arsenic. in West Bengal, India, for a decade, and in below 50 mg per litre. In our samples from The groundwater of Uttar Pradesh and Bangladesh for the past four years. From Bangladesh (n49,465), 59% of the 7,800 Bihar has trace concentrations of iron (0 our analysis of thousands of samples of samples taken at known depth and contain- to 0.7 mg per litre) compared with higher water and sediment1–7, we have been able to ing arsenic at over arsenic 50 mg per litre values in West Bengal (up to 36 mg per test the course of events proposed by Nick- were collected from depths of less than 30 litre) and Bangladesh (30 mg per litre)1. son et al.8 to account for the poisoning of m, and 67% of the 167 samples with arsenic NATURE | VOL 401 | 7 OCTOBER 1999 | www.nature.com © 1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd 545 brief communications 10 6.4-9.7 in iron, as we and others have found in 11-15.8 Bangladesh. ) 20-21.9 Tarit Roy Chowdhury*, Gautam Kumar m ( 24.7-28 e Basu*, Badal Kumar Mandal*, Bhajan g n 29.3-40.2 a Kumar Biswas*, Gautam Samanta*, Uttam r h 38.4-40.2 t p Kumar Chowdhury*, Chitta Ranjan e 43-52.4 D n = 7,800 Chanda*, Dilip Lodh*, Sagar Lal Roy*, 56.7-89 Khitish Chandra Saha*, Sibtosh Roy†, 93.3-150 >150 Saiful Kabir†, Qazi Quamruzzaman†, 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Dipankar Chakraborti* Samples (%) *School of Environmental Studies, Figure 1 The proportion of well samples containing more than Figure 2 Photomicrograph (magnification, 2100) showing the Jadavpur University, Calcutta 700032, India 50 mg per litre arsenic changes with depth in Bangladesh. arsenic-containing opaque particles that are abundant in sedi- e-mail: [email protected] ments. Analysis of selected opaque particles by X-ray diffraction †Dhaka Community Hospital Trust, concentrations above 1,000 mg per litre and laser microprobe mass analysis identified the minerals pyrite, Bara Moghbazar, Dhaka 1217, Bangladesh rozenite (FeSO .4H O), haematite and magnetite in association were collected from wells between 11 and 4 2 1. Das, D. et al. Analyst 120, 917–924 (1995). 15.8 m deep. with quartz and calcite. 2. Das, D. Thesis, Jadavpur Univ., Calcutta, India (1995). In the Lakshmipur district of Bangladesh, 3. Das, D. et al. Environ. Geochem. Health 18, 5–15 (1996). 4. Dhar, R. K. et al. Curr. Sci. 73, 48–59 (1997). three of the shallowest tubewells (depths of per kg. Our microscopic examination of 5. Samanta, G. et al. Microchem. J. 62, 174–191 (1999). 6.4 to 9.7 m) contained arsenic concentra- sediment samples from areas with arsenic- 6. Mandal, B. K. et al. Sci. Tot. Environ. 218, 185–201 (1998). tions of over 1,000 mg per litre. The shal- contaminated groundwater indicates an 7. Roy Chowdhury, T. Thesis, Jadavpur Univ., Calcutta, India (1999). 8. Nickson, R. et al. Nature 395, 338 (1998). lowest tubewell in Bangladesh is 6.4 m, and abundance of these opaque particles (Fig. 9. Nickson, R. Thesis, University College London (1997). at that depth in the village of Chandipur, at 2). Electron microprobe analysis of the par- 10.Mott MacDonald Ltd British Geological Survey Final Report the Ramganj police station, we found an ticles revealed increased iron, sulphur and (January 1999). m 3,6 11.Akai, J. et al. in Conf. Proc. 3rd Forum Arsenic Contamination of arsenic concentration of 1,354 g per litre. arsenic , with arsenic content ranging from Groundwater in Asia 51–54 (Faculty of Engineering, Miazaki 7 In the Noakhali district, we found arsenic at 0.07 to 1.36% by mass . University, Japan, 1998). 2,700 mg per litre at a depth of 9.7 m. As Laser microprobe mass analysis identi- shown in Fig. 1, many of the shallowest fied arsenic-rich pyrite3, and X-ray diffrac- McArthur replies — In their comments on wells contain more than 50 mg per litre of tion identified the minerals pyrite, rozenite our paper1, both Acharyya et al.
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